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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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No impact from Savannah River radioactive wasps
The news is abuzz with recent news stories about four radioactive wasp nests found at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The site has been undergoing cleanup operations since the 1990s related to the production of plutonium and tritium for defense purposes during the Cold War. Cleanup activities are expected to continue into the 2060s.
C. Kalbach
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 95 | Number 1 | January 1987 | Pages 70-78
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE87-A20433
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Improvements have been made to an existing method for implementing realistic pairing corrections in particle-hole state densities. The threshold energy for the pairing “single particle” states is used to replace the usual equispacing model Pauli energy, resulting in an improvement in the calculated state densities for low exciton numbers. Remaining discrepancies between the simple state densities and the results of a detailed pairing calculation are attributable to deficiencies in the original equispacing model state density formula. An ad hoc improvment to this formula is proposed. The method is extended to state densities for two types of fermions, and questions associated with its practical implementation are discussed.